News

Renewable energy company Principle Energy plans to start building a $290 million (€224 million) bioethanol plant in Mozambique in 2009. Principle Energy, in which London-listed fund manager Principle Capital has a stake, raised $70 million towards the project in 2007. To date this year it has held back from raising a targeted $90 million due to adverse market conditions. 'Seeing as the…
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Italian oil refiner Saras plans to start up a 200,000 tonne biodiesel plant in Cartagena, Spain, in December. The plant will use various vegetable oils as feedstock. The refiner has estimated investment in the plant at €35 million. Spain is due to introduce a 2.5% compulsory target for biofuels share in total car fuel use next year and raise it to 3.9% in 2010. That target will require…
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Poet, the US' largest ethanol producer, is engaging in buyout talks with a number of ethanol companies. Several US ethanol companies have encountered financial battles brought on by volatile market conditions. VeraSun Energy, the second largest US producer, sought bankruptcy protection on 31 October after it suffered significant losses in Q3 due to a dramatic rise in the cost of…
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US-based Blackhawk Biofuels has opened a 45 million gallon a year biodiesel plant in Danville, Illinois. The plant on the Indiana border will manufacture biodiesel from vegetable oil. Blackhawk expects the plant to sell biodiesel by the end of the year. The company bought the plant just before Biofuels Company of America completed construction. In early March, Blackhawk learned that a major…
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US-based GreenHunter BioFuels, a wholly-owned subsidiary of GreenHunter Energy, has initiated start-up of biodiesel production at the company's biodiesel refinery in Houston following repairs and recovery from Hurricane Ike. GreenHunter's biodiesel refinery, one of the country's largest, located along the Shipping Channel in Houston, Texas, sustained a direct hit from Hurricane…
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The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DoE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Brazil-based energy company Petrobras have signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate for two years on research to accelerate the development and commercialisation of second-generation biofuels. Research will be conducted jointly at NREL’s laboratory in Golden, Colorado, and in Brazil. NREL’s research…
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The European Commission (EC) is contemplating new rules for biofuels by the end of 2010 to prevent production from causing destruction to rainforests. Environmentalists have criticised the Commission's initial January proposals to instill 10% of all road transport fuel derived from renewable sources by 2020. Of that 10% biofuels would play a key part, stoking the engines of big exporters…
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The Oiltanking Vitória terminal in Brazil has loaded 5,000 m3 cargo of neutral grade ethanol into its first vessel, Fairchem Unicorn. Loading was conducted in close cooperation with representatives of LASA, Bauche-Energy and SGS. Oiltanking Vitória functions as a distribution and export hub for cargos moving through Brazil, the world’s leading and most competitive ethanol market. The…
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France is preparing a national plan for renewable energy, which has set aside any assessment of the EU's biofuels draft directive to generate a 10% share of biofuels in transport by 2020. France's Environment and Energy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo offered the national plan for renewable energies on 17 November. The plan aims to bring the share of renewables in the energy mix by 2020 to…
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Germany's sugar farmers are targeting sales to the bioethanol industry to shift a large crop this season. Germany is forecast to produce 3.6 million tonnes of refined sugar from its 2008/09 crop, in excess of the country's European Union sugar production quota of 2.7 million tonnes, which has been cut as part of EU reforms to curb farming subsidies. The bioethanol market is a growing…
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Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobras expects to export 605 million litres of ethanol in 2008. Petrobras downstream director Paulo Roberto Costa says that 505 million litres will be shipped to the US, with the remaining 100 million litres sailing to Japan. Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of ethanol and second largest producer after the US. The country’s large sugarcane market…
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US Green Energy Technology (GET) and the Philippines-based biotechnology firm Secura International (SIC) have signed an agreement to construct a $30 million (€23.7 million) biodiesel plant using malunggay oil as feedstock. Malunggay is a versatile plant that can grow anywhere, except in rice-growing, flooded areas. It is suitable for rainfall of less than 1,000 millimeters a year and needs…
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Malaysia’s government has approved 91 biodiesel production licences with a total capacity of 10.2 million tonnes of biodiesel. Deputy minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities senator A. Kohilan Pillay says that to further promote the use of renewable and sustainable forms of energy on 30 October the government approved the mandatory blending of 5% palm methyl ester with petroleum…
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